


A Price Paid Willing

by SilverDagger



Category: Claymore
Genre: Angst, Backstory, Disobeying Orders, Gen, gen - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 16:18:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2699378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SilverDagger/pseuds/SilverDagger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cynthia is no stranger to regrets, but some choices are easier than others. Or: the Organization are a bunch of bastards and Cynthia is sick of it.</p><p>Written for the prompt <a href="http://fic-promptly.dreamwidth.org/2013/09/03/tuesday-general-song-prompts.html?thread=8305232"><i>A choice that cost me everything and set somebody else free</i> (Conjure One - Extraordinary Way)</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	A Price Paid Willing

Cynthia wasn't called to Goya village on a job, but it's clear from the moment she sets foot inside the walls that there's a yoma nearby. She can feel the weight of its aura pressing on her senses, inescapable at this range, and smell the rank scent of it carried on the lifting wind. A low growl rises in her own throat in response, instinctive, rapidly quelled. She isn't here for hunting, she reminds herself. She wasn't called to save anyone.

 _Get your supplies,_ she tells herself. _Get out. Be on your way._

It shouldn't be difficult. She's done it before. She knows how to leave a place behind.

As she walks up the long path from the village wall to the market, the townsfolk fall silent, cease their business as she passes and talk in whispers behind her back. _Do you think,_ one says, and _not possible, what about the money?_ She walks on, more quickly than necessary, before she can hear more. She's used to curiosity, a bit of subdued fear, some staring. This is different. Fear stopped bothering her long ago, or at least she became inured to it. She doesn't know how to deal with hope.

From what she sees of the people here, the way they watch her, neither do they. None seem to know what to make of her, at least until she stops outside the general store and sees a man making his way very quickly in her direction. He's a thin fellow, old and slightly worn-looking like everything else in this town, but he wears the medal of office on a chain around his neck, and despite his harried air, he walks with authority.

He doesn't bother with a proper greeting, only marches up to her with the grim resolve of a condemned man on the way to his own execution, and says, "we never called for one of you."

"I know that," she says. "I'm just here for provisions, I won't stay to trouble you." But that aura nags at her still, like a stone in her boot that she can't dislodge, digging into her skin. She doesn't know how long ago the last death was, or how soon the next. Anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, and any one of these people could be taken.

"You never sent out a petition?" she asks, but she knows the answer already. She's heard all of this before.

"Not much point to that, now, is there?" the mayor says, with a sour twist to his mouth. "We can't pay."

Not what Cynthia was hoping to hear, but no surprise. This isn't a rich province. Around her, she can see thatched roofs, weather-worn fences surrounding front-yard gardens, a few scrawny goats and chickens and not much else to speak of. It's been a bad year, she can tell. Rains too soon, frost too late, insects or blight or some other small disaster. Enough in the storehouse for the winter, perhaps, but nothing left to spare. She wonders, sometimes, if yoma choose towns like this knowing.

The Organization takes other payment too, of course. They hadn't the heart, in her own hometown, to trade a daughter unwilling. But if some brave girl should volunteer -

Cynthia is authorized to make that offer, if she chooses.

There's a crowd beginning to congregate at the fringes of the market, talking low amongst themselves or just watching. She searches their faces, the old and the young, angry and resigned, the children still clinging to their mothers' skirts. And off to the side, grey-bearded and leaning on a cedarwood cane, the thing that looks a lot like a man and isn't. She looks at it, standing there in its human guise, and it looks back, bold as anything, secure in its own safety. It understands her orders as well as she does.

She's authorized, and for a moment, she considers it. It's a better fate than death, anyway, and - her hand strays to the symbol at her throat - not such a bad life, in the end.

There's a little girl watching her from the shadow of a rain barrel, skinny and threadbare with a wooden doll clutched in one hand, no sign of a parent in sight. She doesn't look away when Cynthia looks in her direction, doesn't even flinch. Brave, then. Not afraid of monsters.

That's the one, Cynthia thinks. Given a choice, that's the girl she would pick.

The child stares in her direction, solemn, expecting nothing. Cynthia never was an orphan, but she knows that look. It's easy to imagine this girl in trainee armor, hefting a sword as tall as she is - and just like that, Cynthia makes a decision. It's barely even conscious, just the shift of her feet into a combat stance and her hand lifting to find the hilt of her sword, just the knowledge of what she's about to do. Then she leaps, the blade light in her hand, and she brings it down so easily it's hardly a choice at all.

The yoma dies quickly - a heavy diagonal slash too fast to defend against, and it falls, human mask stripped away at the last. She always kills them quickly. There's no reason to make them suffer. 

"There was only the one," she says. "You're safe now."

"I told you," the mayor says, panicking a little. "I just told you we couldn't pay you - "

And she cuts him off with a shake of her head, flicks the blood from her sword as the villagers watch with suspicious eyes. 

"You never sent in a petition. The only people who know about that - " she inclines her head toward the corpse at her feet - "are you and me."

"Are you saying..."

"There's no charge."

"Nothing?"

"That girl," she says. "She's an orphan, isn't she?"

"What of it?" the mayor growls, all tentative goodwill vanishing. She can't blame him. There's little doubt he's familiar with the Organization's ways, and if anything, that flash of anger bodes well for the girl's chances.

"Take good care of her," Cynthia says. "That's my price. And as for me, a roof for the night, a bath, and a chance to restock my supplies. After that, I'll move along."

There's a long moment of quiet, a ripple of voices through the crowd that carries a different, less hostile uncertainty. At last, the mayor nods, sends a smile in the child's direction, and says, "I'll see it done."

He hesitates, glances around at the townsfolk and then back at Cynthia, then adds in a voice loud enough to carry, "you'll be welcome here in the future. If you ever return."

"I'm grateful," she says, and finds herself smiling too, more naturally than she has in a long time. It's hard to say what will happen next; she doesn't know whether the Organization will find out about this, and she doesn't know what they'll do to her, if they ever do. But two days or two weeks hence, all these people will be alive, and that seems a fair enough trade at any price.

She keeps her promise - a bit of shopping, a night at the inn, and she's gone with the sunrise - and when she looks up on her way out to see an orphan girl peering down at her from a lighted window, dark eyes sharp with curiosity, she gets the sense that the mayor will keep his promise too. And it's strange - Cynthia is no more at ease with feather mattresses and enclosing walls than any warrior, but even so, leaving by the same gate she'd entered with sunlight streaming down around her and only the road ahead, it feels like she's woken from the first restful sleep she's had in years.


End file.
